


Look Back in Anger

by DracoMaleficium



Series: Substitute [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Constipation, How Many Jetko Cliches Can I Cram Into One Fic, Jet Is A Stalker, Jetko Week 2013, M/M, Prequel, angry young men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-15 17:49:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1313755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DracoMaleficium/pseuds/DracoMaleficium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Zuko is the new kid on the block, Jet is a little shit and things go very, very wrong. </p><p>Prequel to "Substitute."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Instinct

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I stole the title from John Osborne, who wants to make something of it?
> 
> This fic has been long in the making - ever since the announcement of prompts for Jetko Week 2013, to be precise, with each chapter modelled after one of the prompts. Obviously I didn't make it in time for that, *cough*. But better late than never in my books, so here we go.
> 
> A lot of the fic is ready, so you can expect the remaining parts (6 of them) in weekly installments as of today. However, I can't promise they're going to be any good, as I seem to be out of my mojo recently. 
> 
> **And a fair warning which is also a spoiler** : if you're a hardcore Jetko shipper, you may not like this fic because it will NOT have a happy ending. Sorry, but that's the wretched lot of a prequel, I'm afraid. 
> 
> Now, a quick crash course for those of you who are not familiar with the setup: Zuko is the son of a filthy-rich business magnate who got scarred and disinherited in mysterious circumstances. He is now living with his Uncle in a made-up town in southern Michigan and helping out in his teashop. There. You're all set. 
> 
> The later parts will have content that may be read as dubcon. Proceed at your own discretion.

**1\. Instinct**

 

_There is a mouth moving against his. It’s warm, and slightly chapped, but most of all it’s insistent. And that is a good thing._

_Zuko needs the insistence to keep him from thinking._

_Anyway, it helps, when he kisses back, his body hitting the closed back door to the teashop – it helps him. That passion, the need he feels seeping into his body from Jet’s heated touch. He’s made up his mind now, and he wants it, he knows he wants it, and he’s going to lead Jet upstairs to his bedroom tonight and they’re gonna – they’re gonna –_

_“Come on,” he whispers and is temporarily startled by the rough quality of his own voice – it feels a bit like sandpaper. Still, he’s determined, he’s not going to get cold feet now when all the blood is rushing down to his groin and his cheeks feel a bit as if he’s caught a fever, and he will go through with it, he_ will. 

_So he adds, “Let’s go up. Uncle won’t see you.”_

_Jet’s face is right there, his breath hot and shallow on Zuko’s skin, and he feels the hitch in that breath once Zuko’s words create a spiderweb line between their moist, almost-touching lips._

_Jet’s not stupid. Well, okay, most of the time he isn’t. About some things, at least, because he’s still a damned great idiot when it comes to lots of other stuff, but not about_ this _, Jet knows about this, and he’s…_

_He probably realizes perfectly well what it means. What Zuko is offering._

_Zuko looks into his eyes and waits, and tells himself: Don’t think._

_A few heartbeats hammer the seconds away before Jet finally smiles out of the corner of his mouth and leans in for another kiss._

_And then he whispers,_

_“Okay.”_

 

***

 

“Hey, Zuko?” Jin nudged him when he was coming back with an empty tray. 

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got quite a lot of orders to handle right now so would you mind taking one of my tables? It’s the guy who just came in, table 5.”

Zuko simply shrugged and put the tray down, then snatched his notebook. One more customer hardly mattered – even though each table Zuko served invariably felt like one tiny blow to his pride, to push him further and further away from his true place in the world, but he’d promised himself he wouldn’t dwell on that, hadn’t he – and it wasn’t like he had his hands full at the moment, anyway. 

“Thanks, you’re a dear.” Jin patted him on the shoulder and grabbed her order, a tray with three steaming cups of Uncle’s latest special brew. 

Zuko glared after her, but there was hardly any effort behind it these days. It’d been a year since he moved to that cramped shithole of a town and he still hated almost everyone and everything in it, but Jin had become one of the few exceptions. 

For many reasons. But mostly, Zuko thought, because now she smiled at him like she smiled at everybody else, with no hints of pity or awkwardness, and wasn’t trying to _not_ look at his scar when she addressed him. 

Unlike most people in this stupid town.

… And, well, there was also the thing that she’d finally taken the hint and stopped hitting on him, too. That helped a lot. Not that Jin wasn’t a beautiful girl – she was – but Zuko just wasn’t interested. In her or in anybody else. Planting roots in Summerfield, any kind of roots, was the last thing he needed, no matter what Uncle said. 

He just wanted out.

Zuko knew that those kind of thoughts only ended up weighing him down, but he let them fester anyway as he exited the kitchen area and went out in search of Jin’s assigned customer. Anger was familiar and the familiar helped. Anyway, it wasn’t as if there was anything else for him to hold onto.

Not here.

Jin’s customer turned out to be a guy about Zuko’s age, which only further dampened his mood – he really didn’t feel like dealing with any of his so-called schoolmates. The kid was lounging back in his chair and already reading the teashop card laid out on each table; but when he put it down, it was clear from his unimpressed expression that the contents of the Jasmine Dragon menu had not been a particularly gripping read. 

Zuko wasn’t surprised. The newcomer certainly didn’t look the type to enjoy teashops. Judging from the mismatched, bizarre outfit and pretentious accessories that immediately put the words “suspicious,” “bad sort” or “hooligan” to mind, he looked more like the type to enjoy the streets in the dodgy parts of town, shady alleys and pubs. His bored slouch, one arm over the backrest in a pose that somehow projected both comfort and challenge at the same time, practically screamed “self-proclaimed badass”. In the cozy, elegant interior of Uncle’s teashop, he looked about as out of place as Zuko felt. 

He had seen that kid around before, he realized as he approached the table. Around the school. Never inside the building, but always on the grounds, leaning against walls, usually with a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth and either being surrounded by a group of younger kids or with some girl or other hanging on his arm. 

Not that Zuko ever paid the strange trespasser any attention. Mostly because he didn’t want to pay attention to anyone in this ridiculous excuse for a town and that kid was just another part of the scenery, one more element to make up the hateful mosaic that was Summerfield. 

As it turned out, though, the stranger refused to stay just an element in a mosaic for long. As soon as Zuko got to his table, his rather startlingly-shaped eyebrows shot up and he looked him up and down, slowly, in a way that couldn’t possibly be described with anything other than “obscene.”

Zuko didn’t raise the notebook to cover his chest with it on instinct only because his pride wouldn’t let him.

“Ready to order?” he murmured, his face tightening into a frown. The stranger was still looking at him like – like _that_ , and it was suddenly all Zuko could do not to shove the notebook in his face.

“Hey,” said the other kid in response, lips curving into an infuriating smirk. His eyes were half-lidded now as he gazed up at Zuko from under his shaggy mess of hair. “I know you. You’re the new kid, aren’t you.”

His voice had a pleasant sound, Zuko thought fleetingly. _Smooth_. He looked smooth, too, the way he slouched and smiled and seemed obnoxiously comfortable, even looking as out of place as he did, while he kept staring at Zuko as though he saw something – interesting. 

Which was probably why Zuko instinctively decided he didn’t like him. People who projected smoothness so effortlessly weren’t trustworthy – he’d spent enough time around them to know. At the end of the day, the smoothness was always, without exceptions, the bait to cover the catch.

… Well, maybe Uncle was the one exception. But he didn’t count. He was _Uncle_. 

“So?” he bit back, clutching the notebook.

The boy’s smirk widened. In response, Zuko let his frown turn into an outright glare. 

He also decided not to bother correcting the “new kid” bit, though in all honesty he’d spent a year in Summerfield already, which technically invalidated the term. He knew he still was the new kid and, in all likelihood, would always be. 

And that was how he wanted it. He would always be an outsider to those people and preferred to keep it that way, for everyone to know. He was not one of them.

“So, I’ve been watching you, new kid.” The other boy leaned forward over the table, his smile still in place and grating on Zuko’s nerves even more. “You seem interesting, so why don’t we do it the right way? The name’s Jet.”

Oh hell no. Zuko absolutely refused to play that stupid game before it even started. He _hated_ games.

“Just make an order already or get out, there are other people who’d want the table,” he hissed. 

“Hm, that’s right, people do say you’re a touchy one.” The Jet kid raised his ridiculous eyebrow at him, returning to his slouching position. “All right, all right, I’ll be nice. Just bring me whatever’s the cheapest, okay? And make it double, I’ll be having company.”

He didn’t seem all that pleased by the prospect. Not that Zuko cared. As soon as he got his order, he turned away and stalked over to the kitchen, ignoring Jin’s questioning glance. 

God, he was so angry, so angry _all the fucking time_ , and it took one kid’s annoying smile to set him off like a damned firecracker…

As if in response to the rage boiling ever so close to the surface, his scar tingled with a phantom of never-quite-forgotten pain, but Zuko refused to reach up and touch it. 

Fuck. It’d been over a year now, more than that, and he could still feel…

“Nephew?” There was Uncle’s heavy, warm hand closing on his shoulder and rubbing a little. “Is everything all right?” 

Zuko shook the comfort away before he let himself accept it. 

“Fine. Here’s the order. I’ll get that.” He snatched the tray with the cheesecake and two cups before he could look up and see the concern in Uncle’s warm, warm eyes.

Jet’s company, as it turned out a few minutes later, consisted of one girl – one very specific girl, at the sight of whom something cold and sharp stabbed into the inside of Zuko’s gut. Katara. Zuko was just silently putting two cups of their cheapest “Student” tea on Jet’s table and pointedly ignoring any attempts at conversation the other boy kept making when she stormed in, her expression clearly screaming murder. 

It was enough to make something in Zuko recoil, but, he was astonished to discover, the rage wasn’t aimed at him this time. No, _this_ time the hurricane Katara barely spared him a glance as she took her seat, then directed the full torrent of her cold, blue-eyed fury at Jet.

“Well?” Zuko managed to catch before he made himself scarce as quickly as was humanly possible. “What kind of lame excuses are you going to try to feed me?”

It only took a few minutes to prove that whatever excuses, for whatever crime, Jet did come up with were unsatisfactory – when Zuko emerged from the kitchen once again to deliver an order, Katara was nowhere to be found and Jet was sipping his tea in silence, eyes half-closed as he continued slouching in his chair. 

He wasn’t smiling anymore.

Not that Zuko cared – he didn’t. That had been established very early on, when he’d managed to insult Katara and her brother so thoroughly that any further interludes of friendship from them were completely out of the question. Even so, when he approached Jet’s table again after a while to collect the cups, he still found himself asking:

“What did you do to her?”

Jet shrugged, not meeting his eye. “Nothing she can’t handle,” he said quietly. “Let’s just say our outlooks on life aren’t quite as similar as I hoped… But that’s just life for you.” He sighed and looked up at Zuko, and only then did the corner of his lips go up again. “So,” he picked up in an oddly lighter tone, “what’s your story, Zuko?”

Whatever defenses Zuko had let down for that split of second were instantly back up. 

“Fuck off,” he snarled, taking the cups away more violently than he’d intended. It didn’t matter how Jet learned his name. He could as well forget it.

“Okay, okay,” he heard as he made his way across the teashop to the kitchen without once looking back. 

He still had to bring him the bill, but maybe if he didn’t make any eye contact the guy would take the hint and back the fuck off…

“So whatcha doing for the evening?”

Shit.

“None of your damned business.” Zuko threw the bill on the table and moved to make himself scarce, but suddenly there was a hand on his wrist.

“Wait,” Jet said, looking at him intently. “I just want to get to know you better, new kid.”

“Don’t touch me!” Zuko wrenched his hand free and glared down at the kid, feeling the rising need to smash something. “What the hell do you want from me?”

People were _staring_ at them now, he could feel their curious eyes drilling into the back of his neck. Hushed, scared whispers were breaking over the teashop in ripples. 

Zuko was past caring. Long, long past. 

“You’re interesting.” Jet shrugged, giving him that self-satisfied smirk again. “I get the feeling we’re a lot alike, you and I. Call it instinct.”

“You and I have nothing in common,” Zuko seethed, feeling the pain of his fingernails digging into the skin of his palm as his fists shook. “Now piss off. I’m working.”

Jet didn’t try to stop him again and a part of Zuko was disappointed – he would have given a lot for an excuse to punch the bastard.

 _Instinct_ , huh? Well, Zuko knew a few places where Jet – and what kind of name was that, anyway? – could shove his instinct. Why couldn’t those people get it into their heads that Zuko was not looking for company? First Sokka and Katara, and ha, just look at how that had turned out, and now this…

“Here.” Jin laid a few coins beside him when he was washing the dishes later in the evening. “It’s yours. From table 5.”

“Take it,” he murmured. “I don’t want it.”

“So what did he say that set you off like that?” Jin asked gently, but she didn’t try to touch his shoulder like Uncle had – and Zuko was grateful for that. Jin, at least, was beginning to understand. 

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” 

And that was the worst thing, wasn’t it – he couldn’t exactly describe what got him so angry. Probably because he was _always_ angry, every hour of every day, and he couldn’t take it anymore, keeping it in, gritting his teeth, reigning in the screams, and his body was positively itching for something to set off the bombs…

“Whatever you say.” 

Jin left him in peace after that and went about her own business silently. It was only when she left that Zuko realized she hadn’t taken the tip after all.


	2. Stubborn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shameless Jetko cliches continue.

**2\. Stubborn**

 

_Uncle is in the main teashop area with some of Zuko’s teachers, playing their stupid game. They will be busy well into the night, which is just what Zuko needs._

_Uncle won’t notice anything._

_He lets Jet in through the back door and means to lead him upstairs straight away, but is temporarily distracted by the lips pressing into the back of his neck and the body pushing him forward into a wall. Jet is kissing his neck from behind, as much of his skin as he can reach, their bodies pressed tight into each other, and it’s all Zuko can do not to moan when he feels the bulge in Jet’s jeans moving against his ass._

_Oh God, they’re going to do it, they’re really going to do it. And Zuko wants it so much he feels faint with need, even through the sheen of fear and doubt he cannot seem to shake off completely, not even when he gets drunk._

_He doesn’t know if he trusts Jet._

_He doesn’t even know if this, whatever it is, should be about trust in the first place._

_But maybe – maybe it’s worth it, to take this risk. Just once. Just tonight._

_Jet is kissing his neck and whispering how much he wants him, and Zuko closes his eyes._

 

***

 

Zuko did his best to forget about Jet after that first encounter and would have been grateful if Jet did him the courtesy of doing the same.

He should have known he was never that lucky.

“Hey, new kid,” he heard that gratingly smooth voice call out to him as he made his way to the parking lot after class. “What’s the hurry?”

Zuko ignored him and kept walking to his car, parked by the sports’ wing of Flowing Creek High School. When he heard footsteps following, he sped up, but the intruder only matched his pace, clearly immune to societal hints.

“Wait up! Zuko!” Jet called after him. “Could you give me a ride?”

“What? Hell no. Why the fuck would I give you a ride?” Zuko stopped abruptly and turned on his heel to face the menace; maybe if he glared at Jet hard enough it would get the point across. He’d learned that people usually let him be if he glared at them.

It was probably the scar.

Jet didn’t seem intimidated like all the other kids at school, though; he just smirked when he caught up with Zuko, tucking the cigarette he had been smoking behind his ear.

Zuko briefly entertained the mental image of it setting Jet’s mass of shaggy hair on fire.

“Because I’m stranded here and it’s good to help people in need,” the pest said smoothly, smiling that infuriatingly easy smile that reminded Zuko so much of some of the people back home. “Gives you those warm and fuzzy feelings of goodness and rainbows and shit like that. Besides, we’ve already met. Even if your parents warned you not to talk to strangers, I no longer qualify.”

“Piss off.” Zuko turned away from him and resumed his walk towards the car at a brisk pace.

“And what if I told you it was for a good cause, not just for myself, but for the community at large?” came Jet’s call, though thankfully not accompanied by footsteps this time.

Zuko didn’t bother to reply, but wrestled the door to the car open with such force that they nearly bounced closed again. He didn’t give two hoots about the community at large. Not this one, anyway.

Jet let him drive away without any more disturbances, but he was still standing in the parking lot looking after his car when Zuko glanced in the rear view mirror.

 

***

 

If Zuko had hoped his brief association with the strange punk boy would end there, he couldn’t have been more wrong. The bastard was _stubborn_. Several days after the parking lot incident, when he put on his apron to help Uncle out for the evening – it wasn’t like he had anything better to do with his time anyway – he nearly did a double-take when he entered the seating area and immediately saw Jet’s familiar mane of hair at one of the tables.

Fuck.

“You deal with him,” he told Jin after retreating to the kitchen.

She looked at him with wide eyes and quirked eyebrows. “Deal with who?”

“That – “ Zuko reigned in what he really wanted to say and settled on, “Table 3. I’m not getting anywhere near him.”

The other waiters were giving him curious looks, but Zuko really couldn’t care less. Stupid reaction or not, he was not giving Jet the satisfaction of waiting on him again.

“Well, okay,” Jin murmured. “Weird, but okay. Want me to tell him to stop bothering you?”

“I don’t care what you say, I just don’t want to deal with him talking to me.”

Jin shot him a suspicious look, but then she shrugged and went to take Jet’s order. Zuko glared at the other waiters until they stopped oggling him and started going about his work again, and did his best to ignore Jet’s staring. He would not give the bastard the satisfaction of acknowledging his existence.

That had been the plan, anyway.

“He keeps asking me if you’re single and if you could come over to talk to him,” Jin muttered when they passed each other in the kitchen. “Says he wants to apologize, or something.”

“I don’t care,” Zuko snapped automatically. “And why would he care if I’m single?” he added after registering her words properly.

Jin giggled and made as if to pat him on the back, but stopped herself in time. “Sometimes you can be terribly oblivious, dear,” she said with her signature good-natured smile. “He wants a piece of you. It’s plain as day.”

Zuko gritted his teeth and ignored the way his hand shook suddenly. “The only piece of me he’s going to get is my fist if he doesn’t let up.”

“Why are you so against the guy, anyway?” Jin wondered, gathering the cups onto her tray. “He’s cute. Seems nice, too, in a bad boy kind of way. I’d go out with him.”

“Feel free,” Zuko mumbled, stalking out of the kitchen.

And almost straight into Jet.

“Give me a minute?”

“I thought I told you to fuck off,” Zuko hissed, trying to walk past him. “Want me to spell it out in even simpler words?”

“Hey, I just wanted to apologize!” The Jet kid put his hands in the air in a placating gesture. “Look, now that I think about it, it probably seems pretty stalkerish, what I did there in the parking lot. I’m sorry.”

“You being here now also looks pretty stalkerish to me.”

“Touché.” Jet grinned, all infuriating smoothness again. “How about I take you out for drinks to apologize properly?”

“Hell no. Get out of my way, I’m working.”

“Yeah, okay, point taken.” Jet stepped to the side, gesturing for Zuko to go on. “Sorry. I won’t bother you anymore.”

Zuko glared at him as he passed and tried to convince himself that Jet absolutely wasn’t checking him out.

 

***

 

… Jet was a fucking liar.

Not only did he not stop bothering Zuko – he started showing up at the teashop on a regular basis. Every Saturday evening he would levitate to whatever table was unoccupied, like clockwork, and then he would sit there and take an impossibly long time sipping his damned tea and staring at Zuko. And it didn’t matter that Jin had learned the drill pretty quickly and took his table whenever he showed up – the staring drove Zuko to white-hot passion with or without conversation.

And the worst thing about it was that Jet had the gall to pretend that he _wasn’t_ there for Zuko. Nooo, not at all, not him! Most of the time he would act as if he was more innocent that a newborn in Vatican, chatting to Jin like they were the best of chums, charming the pants off everyone else, sometimes even bringing a whole bunch of kids with him who looked no better off than himself. And he would always paying for their drinks.

Zuko knew he did, whether he wanted to or not. Mostly because Jin wouldn’t shut up about it.

“They’re all orphans, you know?” she told Zuko once when they were washing the dishes. “He takes care of them and thinks up stuff for them to do. They all love him. I think it’s quite admirable, the way he looks after them and makes them feel worthwhile.”

Or, some other time: “Jet asked me if I wanted to go to the animal shelter with him and the kids on the weekend. Apparently they really need all the volunteers they can get, so I said yes. I’ve been there a couple of times before, you know? It’s really rewarding, helping out like that. You should try it sometime.”

Or: “Smellerbee got in trouble last week. Some thugs were bullying her and the cop patrol drove by just as she was starting to fight back. Jet bailed her out and she seems fine, but it just seems so unfair, don’t you think? There’s a lot of that kind of thing around here in other parts of town, apparently. That’s why Jet’s group call themselves Freedom Fighters. They try to do what they can to help the community, even though Chief Bei Fong doesn’t always like their methods. Like, the other day – “

Or: “So Jet told me today he’s had another fight with his foster family. He thinks they’ll send him packing any day now because they don’t like that he doesn’t conform to their comfy suburban lifestyle. That would be the third foster family to kick him out this year. It’s pretty sad, don’t you think?”

Zuko tried to counter the Jet-related assault. He’d ask, “Why are you even telling me all this?”, upon which Jin would shrug and smoothly change the subject. Other times, he would make a point of showing how much he was not interested, splashing, huffing and making other passive-aggressive noises, but that never worked. Neither did blowing up at her – but that, Zuko had learned early on in his first year in Summerfield, so now he only resorted to it when digging his nails into the inside of his palms and biting his cheeks no longer did anything to help. Jin would always wait it out, look contrite, leave him alone for about five minutes or so and then simply keep going.

And the worst thing? After about two months of the Jet invasion, _Uncle_ joined in.

“That boy seems to be really keen on you,” he told Zuko one evening when they were eating dinner in their apartment over the teashop.

Zuko did his best to look uninterested, but he couldn’t help the way his hand tensed on the chopsticks, the piece of roasted chicken halfway to his mouth. “What boy?” he mumbled, eyes fixed firmly on the food.

“The one who looks like he enjoys similar music to yours,” Uncle clarified happily. “You know, the one who comes on Saturdays, whom you enjoy yelling at so much? Did you consider making friends with him?”

“I don’t _want_ to make friends with him,” Zuko announced, then firmly stuffed the chicken into his mouth.

He hoped that would give the topic some finality. Of course, Uncle would never pick up on such hints.

“But why? He seems nice, questionable fashion sense aside. I’m worried that you spend most of your time alone, nephew. Maybe some friends your age would help you feel better.”

“I’m not hungry anymore,” Zuko claimed then, pushing his chair back violently and stalking out of the kitchen. Uncle didn’t try to stop him and Zuko did not look back – he could picture his disappointed face pretty clearly and did not have the strength to actually see it.

A disappointment to Uncle, a disappointment to Father, to Azula, to Mai, even to the people here – Katara, Sokka, whom he did not even want to impress in the first place… He couldn’t take it anymore, he simply couldn’t, he was not what everyone wanted him to be.

What he wanted himself to be.

But as he lay there, shut in his room, his music turned up loud enough to drown out all other noise – even though it never _was_ quite enough – he found himself remembering all the little things Jin would mention, hints that painted a picture of Jet Zuko had flatly refused to consider before. And, willingly or not, he started… wondering.

But it was all for nothing, wasn’t it. He was pretty sure Jet would eventually be disappointed in him, too.


	3. Masks

_**3\. Masks** _

_“You okay there?” Jet asks, teeth catching on Zuko’s skin. “You seem tense, baby.”_

_His hands are sneaking halfway under Zuko’s shirt. Zuko reaches for one of them and starts guiding it down, to the waistband of his jeans. He doesn’t want Jet talking. He just wants to stop thinking, and knows, by now, that this boy can make it happen._

_“Don’t stop,” he finds himself whispering into the back of his hand, where he’s been pressing his lips to avoid making noises. “I need you to keep going.”_

_His cheeks are burning, but so is the rest of him, and at least it’s the good kind of burning this time. He lets it be._

_“Okay,” Jet kisses the nape of his neck again and nibbles at it, making Zuko hiss into his hand and close his eyes again. Yes, that’s good, that’s exactly what Zuko wants. “Okay. Relax, babe, I’m not gonna hurt you.”_

_His hand is pushing under the waistband and Zuko lets it, even undoes his fly to make it easier. Quicker. He presses his hips back, too, rubbing his ass against Jet’s straining hardness, and thinks that maybe, this time, he can let himself believe that._

 

***

 

Loath though he was to admit it, Zuko suspected that one way or another, things would change. The two of them couldn’t keep dancing that awkward dance forever – it was one that he’d been required to learn only twice before, and each time the choreography had been different and anyway, no one had taught Zuko the steps. Things going as they were, he suspected that the eventual showdown, whatever it would turn out to be, would happen in the teashop – Jet didn’t go to their school, after all, and thank fuck for that. 

What he did not expect was to be accosted on one of his solitary escapades, and especially not when he was loitering around an abandoned, half-overgrown soccer pitch on the outskirts of the town that he’d only found because he’d gotten lost on one of his first days here.

“Oi, Zuko!”

Zuko froze in place, foot about to kick a pebble into the mud-blackened grass. 

Holy fuck.

“Still claiming you’re not stalking me?” he snarled, turning around to face the approaching menace.

Jet chose to let it wash over him, as he usually did. Jogging towards Zuko across the pitch, his wild hair painted copper by the setting sun, he was smirking and looking altogether too pleased with himself. “I’m not,” he had the gall to claim when he got close enough. “I was there before you. We ended a little friendly match with the neighborhood kids here a while ago, I was just on my way home.”

“Sure you were.” Teeth gritted, Zuko turned away, ready to leave. His bike was waiting for him a few blocks down and he dearly regretted not taking it with him to the pitch. 

“Come here often?”

“Why don’t you mind your own business for a change.”

“You know, I kind of am doing that right now?” The insufferable smugness in Jet’s voice stopped Zuko in his tracks again. “Look, that might seem weird to you, but I was really kinda hoping that – “

“What?!” Zuko found himself yelling, his body doing a full turn again. Something snapped in him, of course it did, and he was done trying to hold it. “You were hoping for what?! Why don’t you just say it already instead of doing – whatever the fuck it is you’re doing!”

His scar tingled with a memory of pain, pulling at his skin like dried clay. Zuko bit on the inside of his cheek to stop himself touching it. He was already vulnerable and making himself even more so; he’d be damned if he let Jet get any more extra ammo.

Strangely enough, however, Jet didn’t look like he wanted to take it. 

“You’re angry. I get it,” he said, voice unnaturally quiet. His face turned serious, too. It was an odd look on him. Unsettling, with the smoothness, gone, if only for a blink. Suddenly, it made Zuko feel oddly off-balance. “How do you think I feel all the fucking time? And yeah, so maybe I don’t know why you started being angry, but I know what it feels like to go on like that every damned day and you know what? Maybe I can help.”

Zuko looked away. Otherwise, the strange tingle in his stomach, like moths bumping into the walls of it from the inside, might get the better of him. “You don’t know shit about me.” 

“See, that’s where you’re wrong.” Jet tucked his hands into the pockets of his torn black jeans, eyeing him strangely. “I think I do know something about you. And I think you know it too, only you’re scared shitless of letting anyone close. I get it. I’ve been there. If you would only – “

“Shut up!”

The shout startled a flock of pigeons into taking flight on an empty parking lot nearby. It echoed around the empty pitch and flew after the birds, off towards the hulking shadows of scant skyscrapers in the distance. It bounced off their elongated, jagged shadows, made darker by the coming sunset. And then it came back, weak and pathetic and lonely. 

By the time it did, Zuko was shaking. The wave had come, it had broken the dam and now he was letting it carry him, and it felt terrible and all he wanted was to let himself drown.

“Why don’t you get it that I don’t want anyone’s help?” he hissed, fists itching with that familiar, needy burn. “You have no right to assume you know anything about me. I never asked for anything, I just want to be left the fuck alone! I hate this fucking place!”

“I know,” Jet said calmly, crossing his arms over his chest. “Me too. In a way, we’re both outcasts.” Then, his eyes narrowed strangely and he –

He looked straight at Zuko’s left eye.

“Mine may not be on display like that,” he whispered, “but I have scars, too.”

That was when Zuko punched him.

Jet staggered back, catching himself before he fell to the ground. He looked at Zuko and slowly reached out to his cheek, which was already getting puffy. And then – he must have been mad, barking mad, because the bastard _smiled_.

And lurched at Zuko with a fist ready to strike.

Zuko caught it mid-swing, pitted his strength against Jet’s and realized, with a sudden soar in his angry, angry heart, that he could not remember the last time he was so grateful for anything.

And oh, it felt good. So fucking good. Perhaps even more for all of Zuko’s knowledge that he shouldn’t be doing this. His fist immediately hurt like a bitch, but then he was dodging under Jet’s retaliating fist and delivering a punch to the other’s gut, and that felt good, too. Almost as if he was screaming on top of a hill, letting it all out like he’d wanted to since Mom disappeared, only here there were only grunts and heavy breaths, fists and shoves and kicks and pain, and even the pain felt good, so impossibly fucking good; and Zuko wanted more, not even questioned it, he just did; so he may have been a little too slow when Jet’s fist connected with his jaw, or when his knee flew to his stomach. The bastard was quick anyway, and knew how to fight dirty, and Zuko found himself enjoying it – a dark, dark joy, the kind that has tears lurking in it, the kind that makes you want to scream your guts out – when they both tripped and started rolling on the dirty, muddy grass. 

That’s it, his brain told him. You’ve gone mad. You’ve finally snapped and gone mad. Only Zuko wasn’t listening, couldn’t listen even if he wanted to, because somehow there was blood in his ears and blood – on his face, too – and ow, that hurt, how could it feel so damned good if it hurt, nevermind – no way, you bastard, no fucking way – fuck – God, he’d wanted to – punch – something – someone – for so long now, shit, he was – why did it – good, so fucking good, at – last he could – 

Breathe.

“See?” Jet grinned at him from the grass, Zuko’s hands twisted in the collar of his metal-studded leather jacket, his right eye puffy and tinged with purple, his nose smeared in blood. “Doesn’t it feel better?”

… And just like that, it was over. The moths settled down in his stomach with a flurry of tingling wings. Zuko stilled, the fight steaming off of him as surely as the sun was disappearing from the sky, and he just lay there, pinning Jet to the ground, both of them breathing heavily as their long shadows slowly melted into coming darkness.

Fuck him, it _did_ feel better.

His muscles were breathing like they hadn’t since he woke up in the hospital bed. His thoughts were clear and bright-hot, even now when the haze was lifting from his eyes, even though his head was swimming and throbbing with a looming ache. His body hurt all over, yes, tingling with fiery soreness, still humming with the tired remains of adrenaline, but… Zuko liked it. The pain felt good, and as he looked down at Jet, Zuko realized that while they had been fighting, for the first time since the hospital, since Mother, he had simply – stopped thinking. The voices had disappeared, the memories stopped, everything had been put on hold, and even now the blooming pain kept them at bay, and for a moment at least, Zuko was –

At peace. 

“Fuck,” he breathed, lost for any other words.

Then, he rolled off Jet and onto the grass beside him, facing the purple sky. 

“Yeah,” Jet chuckled hoarsely, not moving. “That’s a good way to put it.” 

“Don’t tell me it was your brilliant plan to have me beat the crap out of you.” 

“Oh hang on, is that what happened? I thought I held my own pretty well against you, new kid.”

Zuko turned his head in his direction and glared, but even now he couldn’t put any real heat behind it. Not when his split lip felt like it was on fire, not when he could feel the bruises yellowing on his skin like little ugly suns, not when the burning storm inside of him was, for once, quiet. And he guessed, not for the first time, that there was probably something very wrong with him.

 _So little Zuzu likes a bit of pain, does he_ , Azula’s voice taunted him, as clearly as though she was standing right over him, her eyes cold and bright. _Figures. You always were pathetic_.

Zuko closed his eyes against her and sunk into the pain. The voice drifted away.

“Well, it worked, didn’t it,” Jet whispered, suddenly becoming a tangible presence again. His voice sounded like a smile. “You finally let your mask slip.”

Zuko opened his eyes and looked at him again. Jet was smiling, yes, but… It was different, this time. Not smooth. Almost… gentle? 

Whatever it was, Zuko tore his eyes away from it. 

“You’re so full of shit,” he muttered. 

“So I’ve been told, but you can’t tell me you’re not feeling better now.”

No, Zuko couldn’t. So he decided to stay silent instead. 

A few more breaths, lying there in the quickly-draining peace, just a minute longer. The pain was not going away so quickly and Zuko clung to it, to the clarity it brought, with all his might. Soon, he would have to get up, then get back to Uncle; to school; to the memories and to the knowledge that he was a complete failure. 

Soon… soon… 

… Now.

“Can I come see you after school tomorrow?” Jet asked once they were both on their feet and patting as much of the mud off themselves as they could, which wasn’t a whole lot. 

They both must have looked utterly ridiculous and Zuko was not looking forward to explaining it to Uncle, but…

He looked at Jet, who stared back, his smoothness now cracked just a little bit.

… Maybe you couldn’t disappoint someone who had already seen you at your lowest.

“Fine.” He shrugged, tucking his bruised and bloodied hands into the pockets of his jacket. “If that will stop your stalking. Meet me here at five.”

“Perfect.” The smoothness was back like a charm, but this time, Zuko didn’t find it quite so grating. Maybe because of that hideous black eye – it kind of diminished the effect a bit. “See you then, new kid.”

“Fuck off.”

Jet winked, lit a cigarette and waved at him before disappearing into a street behind the pitch. Watching him go, Zuko slowly put his tingling hand to touch the scar.

He could no longer feel it throb.


	4. Boundary

_**4\. Boundary** _

_He can’t believe they’re doing this right by the staircase, in plain view of everyone who might choose to wander by, when Zuko’s bedroom is only a flight of stairs away._

_He can’t believe he’s doing this at all._

_He can’t believe he’s getting off on it._

_Jet is pushing him against the wall and grinding into him as though they’re on a smoky dance floor somewhere, in one of those underground clubs he likes so much. One hand is on Zuko’s hipbone, gripping hard, while the other is slowly pumping Zuko’s cock through the underwear._

_Zuko is moving against him without thinking, his eyes closed, his mouth biting on the skin of his hand, and tries to focus not on the fear; not on the nerves that are still whispering just under his skin; not on all the reasons why this is all very wrong; but on the feeling. And the feeling, for now, is good._

_He hopes it will be better once they’re finally in his bedroom and close the door on the world. He hopes it will be quick, rough and dirty, just the way he needs it right now, but he also hopes…_

_He doesn’t even know._

_“I want you so much.” Jet’s words are slick and hot just as his hands are, just as everything about him is. “Shit, Zuko…”_

_Zuko turns around and kisses him._

 

***

 

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” Jet said by way of greeting, extinguishing his cigarette under his boot. 

He was also smiling. Zuko wondered if there was a switch on him somewhere, or maybe a string to pull, like you did with shutters, turning the smile on and off.

He looked away, biting his lip. He almost didn’t. 

“I’m still not sure if it’s a good idea,” he said with a defiant tilt to his chin that even he felt must have looked childish, tucking his hands into his pockets for good measure.

“Well, at least no one can accuse you of smooth talkin’,” Jet replied easily, shrugging. “And hey, if all else fails you can always punch me again. Looking good, by the way.”

Zuko rolled his eyes. He looked exactly like the thug he had been yesterday, with the band-aids on his forehead and cheek and his split lip and the bruise around his mouth. Of course it had generated a lot of comments back at school, though none of them had been thrown in his face – no, most of the students were too afraid of him for that and even Chan’s gang had stayed clear of him. As for Uncle, the less said about his reaction the better.

He’d deserved it, anyway, and, well. Jet looked even worse.

“Not gonna compliment me back?” the bastard asked, getting closer. “No snide remarks about how the black eye suits me? Come on, new kid, you’re no fun.”

Zuko’s hands turned into fists immediately. By now the gesture felt as natural as breathing. “Look, I’m not exactly proud of what I did,” he gritted out, looking under his feet and kicking a pebble. “I don’t – I’m not always like that.”

“Okay, let’s clear something up right now: if you want to apologize to me with roses and chocolates and maybe some begging, I’m all for it, but there’s no need to take everything so damned seriously all the time. That? Was what other people call a joke, new kid. You’re not the first person to beat me up and you’re not gonna be the last, so relax, dude. Anyway, I had it coming. Now, are you gonna stop moping long enough so I can show you some cool stuff?”

Zuko glared at him. “What cool stuff?”

“You’ll see, new kid. Come on.”

 

***

 

“There’s nothing cool about an old warehouse,” Zuko decided some time later.

The old warehouse stared back at him, just as unimpressed. Or so Zuko imagined, because it wasn’t as if buildings had faces. But if any of them _could_ have faces, this one would. 

There were many buildings around that would probably have faces too, if they could. This part of Summerfield had no shortage of what people called a “rough kind of charm” when they wanted to be polite. The part Zuko’d never been to before, for all his solitary exploration trips. Whenever he’d reached the outskirts of the densely-populated “respectable” downtown, with the malls and the little cozy shops and the showy office buildings that had all the personality of dead seaweed, he would turn back, not because he was particularly tired or afraid of being assaulted, but because the southern part seemed…

Well, it _had_ personality, that was for sure. One of a less-than-lovable rogue who wouldn’t waste time on cheesy one-liners before hitting you over the head with a baseball bat and taking all your money before leaving you to bleed out in the gutter. Or so it appeared, with its grayscale streets decorated with spilled drinks, dried vomit and litter, hiding behind its younger, more glamorous sister and sheltering people who tended to look one in the eye in all the wrong ways. 

Again, it wasn’t fear of it that had had Zuko turning back whenever he found himself almost trespassing on the invisible boundaries that marked this dark little underbelly that every town had but was ashamed to acknowledge. He hadn’t been afraid then and he wasn’t now, walking alongside Jet down streets he’d never come to know before. It was just…

His father’s cover story. Those neat little press articles that had dismissed him as the textbook example of a rich needy boy screaming for attention by getting into gang fights. This was exactly the sort of environment that he would be expected to inhabit, according to those liars, and he hated proving them right. 

He wasn’t what they were trying to pigeonhole him into, damn them all.

And yet here he stood, in front of a structure that seemed just a stronger gust of wind away from collapsing and decorated so densely in graffiti that the original flaking paint and rust were barely visible underneath. With a kid who, to all intents and purposes, belonged here. 

Zuko was only glad Azula couldn’t see him now.

“Don’t you know that it’s the inside that matters? Behold!” Jet winked at him and pushed the screeching double door. It wasn’t even locked – only a lonely padlock hanging from a rusty chain on one side testified that there had been anything there worth protecting, once upon a time. 

Zuko stepped into the wet, moldy darkness after Jet and, indeed, beheld. 

“Wow, that’s a really impressive example of jack shit,” he murmured, his sneakers echoing in the hollow metal structure. 

“Everyone’s a critic.” Jet wasn’t waiting for him – he was headed for the opposite end of the warehouse, where he proceeded to kick at a random spot on the wall. Once, twice, three times, a pause, then a fourth time. “Get over here, pretty boy, or you’re gonna miss the main event.”

Zuko trudged after him reluctantly, ready to continue being unimpressed. If Jet brought him here only to waste his time on a stupid prank…

Then the spot on the wall Jet had kicked opened suddenly with a horrible metallic screech of a deep ocean beast being awakened from its millennia-old slumber. Zuko stepped back before he could stop himself, while Jet gestured to the freshly made hole with a cocky grin Captain Hook would be proud of. 

“Ta-daaa!” he announced with a flourish. “Wish I had a camera on me now. Your face is definitely what they call an Instagram moment.”

“Jet, is that you?!” called the darkness in the hole in the wall. “Get in already, it’s getting cold in here!”

“We’re coming, Bee!” Jet called back, smugness levels about to pierce the roof. “I’m just bringing our guest in first. He’s a little shy.”

There was a pause. And then the hole said, “Holy shit. Fuck, now I owe you money.”

“You sure do. You can start collecting from all of the others, too, you bunch of Judases.”

“Fuck you.”

Zuko stared at what he was sure was the foulest-mouthed hole in the wall in the world and decided that he was very, very confused.

“What the hell?”

“Don’t you know all the cool gangs have a hideout?” Jet turned to him again, looking altogether too pleased and very punchable. “This is ours. The Freedom Fighters Central or, as we prefer to call it, The Treehouse.” 

Against his better judgment, Zuko stepped closer to the hole and bent down to peer inside it, breaths of cool air oozing from it right onto his face. “That’s the dumbest hideout name I’ve ever heard,” he murmured, for lack of anything better to say. “There are no trees.” 

“No imagination, more like,” Jet said behind him with an overdramatic sigh. “You’re so lucky you’re hot, you know that?”

“What?” Zuko turned over his shoulder to snap at him, which was when he felt a kick to his backside and flew headfirst into the hole. 

The first coherent thing that flashed through his mind as he toppled down what appeared to be some sort of plastic tube into the darkness was, _I’m going to fucking kill that bastard_.

It had to be the shortest slide ride in history. Merely a blink later the ground met him most intimately with a dull thump – but the encounter wasn’t nearly as painful as it should have been. Possibly because, as Zuko realized when he lifted himself up a bit, he landed on a bunch of worn and holey pillows.

“Damn, he wasn’t joking,” someone said to his right. “Now we really do owe him dough.”

“Be nice, Bee,” someone else instructed.

Zuko swore under his breath and started getting to his feet, and looked around to see…

… Children. A lot of children in all shapes and sizes, some of them looking familiar, most of them dressed in obviously second-hand clothes and happily sporting different layers of dirt, all of them staring at him as if he was a Christmas present they hadn’t asked for and were trying to make up their minds about.

In a place which could only be underground, lit with little lamps tucked into nooks carved in stone walls. Now that his eyes were adjusting to the darkness, Zuko was slowly making out the details, like mismatched pieces of old, mole-bitten furniture that were obviously assembled here without any decorative intent, or the various toys and board games strewn across the wooden floor. There were some curtains, too, as if someone had put their foot down once and declared “We’re gonna have some decorating here if it kills me,” but the result was equally chaotic and only served to highlight the joyous spontaneity of the rest of the – cave? Bunker? Zuko didn’t even know.

Nor did he have much time to take it all in. 

“I’d step aside if I were you,” said the child standing to his right, chewing gum. 

Zuko obeyed just in time – a moment later there was a loud “Incoming!” and Jet slid in, landing in the very same spot Zuko had been standing in, only his descent was much smoother and cooler than Zuko’s graceless tumble.

Naturally.

“So whadya think?” he asked proudly, patting himself for invisible flecks of dust. “Cool, isn’t it.”

“What is this place?” Zuko asked, reluctantly somewhat impressed. 

If he’d been any younger, he’d be going _wild_ about a secret hideout like this one. 

“A drug gang used to have a secret storage here a while ago,” Jet explained. “They made this place back in the 60’s before they moved on to bigger and better things. A friend of mine from the orphanage showed me this place and I thought we could use it for our little group. The gang loves it here.”

“The heater’s busted again,” said the kid standing to Zuko’s right who, upon closer inspection, turned to be almost definitely a girl. “I tried hitting it with the thing but it doesn’t work.”

“Damn.” Jet scratched his head. “All right, I’ll look into it. And why’s the music not playing? Did you bust that, too?”

“Naaah.” The girl shrugged. “That’s just because The Duke and Pipsqueak threw a hissy fit over what we should listen to and I told them there won’t be any music if they don’t make up their fucking mind.”

Jet reached out and ruffled the girl’s messy hair, looking like a proud father whose child had just drawn its first squiqle. “Way ta go, Bee. Now everybody, play nice. I don’t want Zuko here to be scared off on his first visit.”

Then, he turned to Zuko, who was still feeling as though he’d been thrown into a hockey ring in the middle of a game. 

“Come on,” he said over a smile. “I want you to meet the kids.”

And so Zuko was paraded before every scruffy ruffian, his head stuffed full of strange nicknames like Smellerbee and The Duke and Longshot and Pipsqueak and Sneers. The kids were open enough, offering to show him their collection of dead moths or funny pebbles or asking if he’d like a go with the toy train they were making. Zuko found himself nodding along, stuttering nonsensical half-answers and dearly wishing he could go back up, not because it was unpleasant, exactly, but because it was just too much.

When Jet finally let him plop down on some pillows, went into a random corner and came back with _pot_ , the feeling only intensified.

“Is that… what I think it is?”

“No, it’s actually ground candy canes and unicorn horns with some pixie dust.” Jet grinned, rolling up a joint. “Try it.”

“No, thanks.” Zuko backed himself into the wall, protectively circling his bent knees with his arms. 

“You sure? It’ll help you relax.”

Zuko glared at him, old article headlines flashing before his eyes. “No, I am not going to smoke pot,” he barked. “Are you seriously going to do that with all those kids around?”

Jet laughed at him, lighting up his makeshift joint. “It’s for the higher initiates only,” he clarified, as though that changed anything. “For when they turn fifteen. They know the drill. It’s _aspirational_.”

“You’re still stinking up the place and raising future drug addicts.”

“There are worse things to be,” Jet murmured enigmatically. “Besides, it’s not like we’re doing any of the hard stuff. It’s just good ol’ marijuana, and it’s not like we smoke it all the time. I control the flow, if you know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.” Zuko looked to the side, to where a couple of children he’d already forgotten the names of were arguing over whether it was better to be stuck in a desert with a laser gun or a lightsaber. “Why did you bring me here in the first place?”

“Let’s put it this way,” Jet said, taking a drag and smiling at Zuko with that languid smoothness that seemed to be his permanent state of functioning. “I shared a secret with you. This is not just any old place, new kid – it’s a secret hideout. Only the elite know about it, so you should be honored. No, seriously, don’t make that face, this shit is real! And now that you know about it, you’re kinda one of us. Like, in theory. So you’re not alone. None of the people in here are alone, do you understand? We all got each other’s backs because out there? No one else will.”

Zuko bit his lip, his eyes roaming over the crowded bunker, an uncomfortable tightness swelling in his stomach. He could see what Jet meant – the kids all seemed like they belonged, so relaxed and comfortable even when they were fighting. A bunch of orphans being a family to each other, with Jet looking over them all like a cool big brother everyone idolized. 

Which only proved that Jet had been wrong about the two of them – they were not alike.

“You have a purpose,” Zuko whispered. 

And then remembered, with a pang of pain in his face, that he had one, too. Only his would never drive him to do what Jet was doing for these kids. 

“Yeah, I do.” Jet leaned back into the nest of pillows, the stinky joint in his hand.

“But I’m not one of you.”

“Not yet.” The smile he sent Zuko this time spoke a bit too much of understanding than Zuko was comfortable with, so he looked away again. “But I let you into a personal space of mine. I trust you not to tell anyone else about it, and that means something. Those kids trust you, too. How does it feel?”

No words came. Zuko huddled in on himself, trying to pretend before himself that he didn’t understand what Jet was trying to do. 

“I’m not one of your lost boys,” he whispered finally.

Jet only smiled.


	5. Trust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, but Easter and a teaching internship wreacked all sorts of havoc with my schedule.

_**5\. Trust** _

_“Upstairs?”_

_Zuko nods, forehead pressed to Jet’s._

_They dart up in a hurry of too-hot limbs and erratic breaths, jumping two steps at a time. Jet’s hand is clasped firmly in Zuko’s, hot and slick and smelling faintly of sex – and it’s no wonder, seeing as it’s been pressed to Zuko’s crotch not a second ago._

_The smell helps too. Zuko imagines how much stronger it will be when they actually do it, when they finally move past barriers of intimacy he’s set up between them, and his vision swims a little when they reach the door to the bedroom and he puts his free hand on the doorknob. Jet’s arms embrace him from behind, as if urging him not to hesitate. One of his hands glides down to his ass and caresses the cleft there, through the jeans, and Zuko swallows much too loudly in the quiet corridor._

_He opens the door._

 

***

 

At last the shouts of the furious, red-faced lawyer started to die in the distance. He’d lasted longer than Zuko thought he would, what with the general appearance of a man for whom sitting had become the default, and he was somewhat impressed. Zuko also thought it meant that they could slow down, but Jet only grabbed his hand, tugged him forward and yelled, “Keep running!”

So Zuko did, and refrained from shaking his head in disbelief only because he was too busy speeding up.

“I thought you said we would only go to the mall!” he yelled at Jet, pulling his hand free as he ran. 

“And we did!” Jet was panting over the huge grin the Cheshire Cat wouldn’t turn his nose at. “The car was just a lucky accident!”

Zuko shook his head. Busting some lawyer’s car was not what he would call a lucky accident, but then again, he’d been too stunned to react in any way when Jet decided to “teach the corrupt bastard a lesson”, so he supposed the outcome was partly his fault, too.

Not that he felt bad. Confused, annoyed and a little nervous, yes, but remorse had no place in the jumble of emotions propelling him forward. Not when he thought about the man’s red, fat face; of his slicked-back hair; of the shine of his shoes. Of what Jet had said about him: the bribes, the defending of rapists and bullies, the casual bigotry.

No, Zuko did not feel bad, and when laughter bubbled up in his throat he reigned it in, but he had a feeling Jet could tell anyway.

 

***

 

That had been the first time Zuko had ever participated in an act of vandalism but, as he realized not long afterwards, it would by no means be his last so long as he grudgingly agreed to hang out with Jet. And why was he doing it in the first place? He had no idea, but there was at least something vaguely appealing about being around someone who understood his rage – and, Zuko soon realized, Jet had almost as much of it as he did, even if he handled it differently. 

Very, very differently, and Zuko still wasn’t sure if he found _that_ appealing, but he was getting drawn in anyway, and faster than he knew. 

It was especially hard to deny it when he found himself standing on the lookout at night while Jet indulged his artistic urges by painting over someone’s house with graffiti. 

“Almost done!” he heard from behind him. “Just a few minutes more.”

“Hurry up!” Zuko hissed over his shoulder, tucking his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. And then he leaned against the lamppost, looked to the sky and asked the heavens at large, _How is this my life?_

On the other end of the street, Longshot waved at them in a signal that said _All clear_ , but Zuko kept imprinting crescents into the insides of his palms anyway. His nerves were being shredded, sweat was beginning to trickle down his neck and he expected to hear a furious “HEY!” with every passing beat of his hammering heart, but…

Well. At least something was happening.

“Okay, I’m done!” There was a hot puff of air on his ear, an arm slinging around his shoulders, the stench of cigarettes right behind him. Zuko recoiled and Jet laughed at him for it, but there was a sharp edge to the laughter and the mirth didn’t quite reach his eyes. Zuko wondered nervously why he even noticed.

“How can you be sure that that guy really is a jerk?” he asked later, brushing that weird moment aside as they darted away from the house with all the nonchalance of people who had just done something wrong and were pretending they hadn’t. 

Jet’s face darkened as he kicked a flattened beer can. 

“I’ve seen him blackmail people,” he said. “A friend of mine said there was evidence that he bribed the mayor not to fund our orphanage but to boost his own schemes instead. But of course Bei Fong can’t do anything because if she tried, he’d have her sacked, and she’s actually decent at her job so that’d be a shame.”

“You’d miss Bei Fong?” Zuko arched a disbelieving eyebrow. “You keep telling me how she’s chasing you down the street more often than not.”

“Yeah.” This time, the snicker seemed genuine enough. “I said she’s decent, I never said she likes me. Though sometimes I think she does. It’s hard to tell with good old Stoneface. But she’d never take a bribe and fires everyone under her who tries, so yeah. We could use more people like her.”

“You really do think you’re some kind of urban guerilla, don’t you.” 

“I am one!” Jet pretended to look offended. “Freedom Fighter, remember? Taking the system apart little by little, as much as we can.”

“Why do you even bother in the first place, anyway? Isn’t it better to just –” Zuko’s hands tensed in the pocket of the hoodie, “ – fend for yourself?”

“Seriously, new kid?” Jet threw him a lopsided look that was altogether too condescending for Zuko’s liking. “You really can’t tell? Because everything’s fucked up, and it’s fucked _me_ up, too. And the other kids. What do you think the system does for people like us, huh? Foster care is bullshit. They’re passing us over from one house to the next because we’re too much to handle, because we’re not clean enough, because we have opinions that make rich white people uncomfortable. And that’s if we get picked up into the foster system at all, and let me tell ya, the orphanages are no paradise either. Most of us won’t ever amount to anything and guess what? Nobody cares because that’s just more convenient. There’s too much of us anyway so why not let us just get killed in the streets where we belong? And it’s happening everywhere, people giving orders without even thinking who they’re screwing over so long as they’re getting money out of it. Hell, the system is why I’m in this situation to begin with.”

Zuko froze, nearly biting his tongue off. He didn’t dare to as much as breathe as Jet ranted on, but now there was a coldness gripping him – coldness and a morbid kind of curiosity. 

And there lay another difference between them: Jet was willing to satisfy it. 

“My parents were in an accident,” he explained quietly. “In a factory. The roof collapsed. Some people got out, but they only got mum and dad out two days later. By then it was too late, and the company they worked for was just this mess of paperwork and there were problems with insurance because they were trying to blame everyone else, so the fucking proceedings went on and on. I didn’t even understand it back then, I just knew that my family were dead and I was alone with no money and no extended family that I knew of. And then it turned out that the building wasn’t safe and they should have made renovations or even demolished it completely, but the fucker responsible wanted to save some money and threatened everyone so they wouldn’t inspect it. Twenty people died because some corporate bastard couldn’t give a single fuck.”

… And suddenly there was nothing to say. Nothing that Zuko _could_ say, knowing what he knew about how his father’s own company operated and realizing, with a sick lurch in his stomach, that this kind of thing happened all the time. 

And he _knew_ that. He knew Jet was right. Wasn’t that why he was now in Summerfield in the first place…?

The scar tingled, and Zuko touched it before he could stop himself.

Suddenly, the petty acts of vengeance were a lot easier to understand.

“Thanks,” Zuko whispered much, much later, after they’d walked in silence for what seemed like hours. “For telling me.”

Jet smiled at him. “I told you, I trust you to have my back.” He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket, then, and rocked on his heels, looking expectantly at Zuko. “So, see you next week?”

This time Zuko nodded with only a short beat of hesitation.

 

***

 

Suddenly, Zuko’s life in Summerfield became what he never expected it could ever be: exciting.

Jet had crept into it like a tick and held on tight, obstinate and patient, drawing Zuko ever closer to his own life and trapping him in it. Zuko could see what was going on, but he found himself drifting along anyway because going with the current was proving more convenient than fighting against it. More pleasant, too, to spend time out in the streets instead of going back to Uncle and his own empty bedrooms full of mementoes he suddenly couldn’t look at anymore. Jet, for all his annoying traits, was a distraction, and Zuko found he’d needed that more than he’d realized. 

Sometimes they would hang out in the Treehouse, listen to trashy music and drink (the beer, procured by Jet’s elusive older friends, was becoming more and more palatable). Sometimes they would visit the animal shelter and help out, and Zuko genuinely enjoyed himself on those occasions even though he’d never go as far as to admit it. Sometimes they would run away from Chief Bei Fong’s officers after committing some kind of mild vandalism on people who, in Jet’s opinion, deserved it, and those times were always like a shot of pure adrenaline into Zuko’s system. Sometimes they would roam the city at dusk, seeking out abandoned places where they could bounce their anger off each other. 

Jet had tried to hold his hand a few times when they did that, and though initially Zuko had lashed out at him, now he found himself pretending he didn’t notice – and once or twice he even brushed back, just a bit, even though he still refused to face Jet’s grin when he did.

He wasn’t blind. Some things were plain enough to understand, and Jet made sure his interest was obvious enough that even the kids at the Treehouse noticed (Zuko was pretty sure there were bets involved). Zuko allowed himself to think about it sometimes, and then he always conjured up memories of Mai to compare and assure himself that he wasn’t a total failure like his father thought he was, but… 

Now he wasn’t so sure. 

Because he couldn’t deny that Jet’s obvious interest was making him curious. None of the boys at his former private school had behaved like that, and even Mai, when she’d allowed him to see her blush, had never leered, never let her eyes roam, never smirked at him like that. Of course not – they were too young, or so he told himself. Zhao _had_ , of course, but even that had been very different because for all his forwardness, there was something strangely fragile about Jet and his signals, something that Zuko could feel echoing in himself. 

It made his eyes linger, sometimes, when they hung out together. Linger and notice things, like how Jet’s shoulders looked bony but firm; how tan and rough his hands looked when he managed to brush them against Zuko’s skin; how his eyes shone and his lips curved, and how his attractive face looked when caught in a rare moment of seriousness. Little things, caught between moments, suspended in a strange place out of time, that he was collecting without even realizing it until they hit him whenever he was trying to fall asleep. And then, inevitably, the questions followed, floating idly on the forefront of his scattered thoughts, like: if Jet tried to kiss him, what would he do? Would he push him away? Would he actually want to kiss back? Which would be worse?

And then the faces of Father and Azula, sometimes even Mother or Mai, would always flash before him like a zigzag of lightning, and he would grunt in frustration and bury his face in his pillow. 

He wasn’t gay. There was no way he could be gay. That would mean he was an even bigger failure to Father than he thought, and anyway, he… 

He thought of Jet, of Father, of some of the men he’d found himself noticing, and he didn’t know. 

But he _was_ curious, and he realized he _liked_ being desired, strange as it was given everything he’d been through. Jet saw the scar, and yet he called him “hot.” He tried to hold his hand. He behaved as though half of Zuko’s face wasn’t a repulsive mess of mangled flesh. 

It was strange, and new, and confusing. And the more Zuko asked himself, would he kiss back? The more he realized that maybe, just maybe… he might. 

Not because he was attracted to Jet. Not seriously, anyway, and he was self-aware enough to recognize the curiosity for what it was. But because it could – maybe – make looking into the mirror every morning somewhat easier. 

Trust didn’t factor anywhere in it. Jet wasn’t trustworthy, and that hadn’t changed no matter how often he repeated that line about having each other’s back or how many personal confessions about his past he freely offered. But maybe you didn’t need to trust another person to let them just close enough to touch, and the truth was…

Zuko wanted to trust him. Or perhaps he just wanted to trust _someone_ , and Jet was as good as anyone else – safer, even, because he was more likely to understand. 

So maybe, if he trusted Jet with this one thing… Other things would follow.


	6. Memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not the last chapter after all; there will be an epilogue because apparently I'm crap at planning.

_**6\. Memory** _

_They stumble into the dark bedroom. Zuko hears the door slam and then feels a hand on the back of his shirt, pulling him roughly until his body hits solid wood. He's out of breath and can barely open his mouth in a grunt before Jet's lips are there, stealing it out of him._

_The kiss is everything he needs it to be, and he lets himself be overwhelmed. Jet blurs his thoughts and at the same time turns them into something pointed, clearer, like an arrow. His hands are everywhere, leaving trails of warmth on Zuko's overheating skin, and in response he is pushing himself up against Jet again just to keep feeling, just to let himself go. He wants it to be easy. He wants it to be quick._

_He just wants to stop thinking, stop hurting – or maybe he wants a different kind of pain to chase the normal one away, like Jet's done it for him before._

_Maybe it's better in the darkness, he thinks. Maybe they should stay like that. It helps with the not-thinking, and if he can't see what his hands are doing it will be easier to breathe._

_But then one of Jet's hands leaves him and starts roaming over the wall in search of the light switch._

_"I want to see you," Zuko hears, hot wetness leaving a trace of the words in his ear._

_Jet finds the light switch and flips it._

 

***

 

It was in Zuko's car that it finally happened, as Zuko was beginning to suspect it had to. By that point the tension between them had grown to the point of overboiling, and he knew that soon he would have to either jump or withdraw from the precipice entirely.

And he'd always hated going back.

Predictably, it started with anger – for both of them. Back at school, Chan and his thugs had called Zuko a junkie faggot and it was only because sifu Piandao had seen them and broken them up that Zuko wasn't currently suspended for brawling (and he would have been, had it been any other teacher). And Jet, as he explained, had been caught on the street by Bei Fong and had had his ass lectured on the same boring stuff as always, and besides, his foster family was apparently on the brink of packing his things and throwing him out on the curb for real.

"It's not like I even want to stay," he was ranting when Zuko drove them to Taco Bell that Friday night, right hand still tingling with the punch he'd delivered to Chan's ugly smirking mug. "It's just that it would be goddamned _nice_ to finally find some people who wouldn't be so fucking blind. If they kick me out, well, good riddance. I was gonna move out first thing as soon as I'm eighteen, anyway."

But he looked grim when he said it, and raw, and the fists on his knees seemed a little too pale and tight, so Zuko said nothing and only drove on, his iPod blasting Oasis.

They got their food in silence, each of them simmering in his own stifling hot emotions and feeding right off each other, as they often did, while Zuko drove them to the abandoned soccer pitch. Once there, far away from anyone's prying eyes, they ate in the car, sprawled on the back seat and listening to the music.

When Jet's hand landed on his, a part of Zuko had been expecting it – and perhaps even itching to move first, just a little bit, because even he could tell that the moment was loaded with that strange lingering, yanking thing between them, and it had been wriggling in the air for weeks now. And the warmth, when it met his skin, was – it wasn't gross. It didn't make him want to pull back. Rather, it tugged at something in Zuko, and his thoughts responded with a half-formed: _So this is it_.

The kiss, when it finally followed – with Jet's hand moving to the back of Zuko's neck and pulling him in slowly enough to give him time to break away – was much the same. They both had tacos on their breaths, and the coke, and their lips were lukewarm at best, and there were empty boxes and greasy wraps on the floor, and it wasn't anything like what he'd been expecting… But also exactly like it.

 _Dirty_. Just as it was supposed to be.

And yet his first impulse still was to pull away. Jet's lips rested against his in a question, in a plea, and he still hesitated because what would the consequences be, one way or another? He didn't know, and though a part of him wanted to find out, the other part was afraid, and it was trying to yank him away even as it twisted his heart into something tight and too big all at once…

But Jet didn't give him time to think. As though he could read exactly what was going on in Zuko's head, he moved his lips in deeper all of a sudden, pushing Zuko back onto the seat, and that one move alone ignited something in him that made him push right back.

Jet, the goddamn bastard, was _challenging_ him. _Scared?_ , his lips asked, responding with growing aggression that still carried something soft underneath. _Will you chicken out of it, new kid?_

In response, Zuko grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him closer.

And the strange thing was, it didn't feel wrong. Dirty – yes, it felt plenty dirty, but in a way that Zuko could see himself enjoy in a twisted, angry way. There was a part of him he hadn't realized existed that was waking up now, and it throbbed with delight when Jet's hand wandered to his fly. That part _wanted_ to feel dirty. It wanted to be coarse, base and vulgar, but perhaps most of all it wanted just to see what it was like to have the hand of someone else close around him and bring him to the edge.

To see if that, too, would make him stop thinking.

So he let it happen. Trying to shut himself against the thoughts urging him to run away, against Father's voice telling him he was nothing but dirt, he let Jet push him back against the backrest and rock against him while his mouth wrestled the need out of him. The upholstery whispered with the protesting creak of stretching material under their bodies while Zuko stretched his arm on the seat for purchase. His legs tried awkwardly to find a position that wouldn't leave them squashed because there really was hardly any room back here, even with Jet's heavy weight straddling him. Jet's stupid metal-studded jacket smelled of food and old leather where it pressed itself to Zuko's face, and the scent mingled with the pervasive smell of car and spicy sauce.

There was saliva, too, which was a bit off-putting. But Jet's heavy breath was getting louder, and so was his own, so Zuko kissed back and tried to concentrate on that, and it made it a little easier to just go with it.

He only hoped it wasn't too obvious that he'd never kissed anyone properly before. If Jet started to mock him about it, he would probably storm out of the car and he didn't want to…

Not quite, anyway.

"You okay?" Jet asked, pulling away.

Zuko looked up at him, hovering over him, his head brushing the roof of the car, and suddenly, he felt small.

"Yeah," he whispered back, stamping down on the feeling and tipping his chin up. "Shut up."

He leaned forward to close the distance between them again, and Jet seemed to understand.

Hands got involved. At first, they wandered over Zuko's face – the healthy side, he noticed, and thank fuck for that – and his neck, but then they crept under the jacket, over his shoulders, then down over his chest. Zuko knew where this was headed. He could feel Jet's bulge pressing into his own and really, it was a natural conclusion to what they'd started, wasn't it? Then air brushed the parts of him that had never before been exposed to the view of strangers, and things got even dirtier, but – now it was clear – that was exactly how Zuko needed them if he was to go through with it. So he bit down his moans into Jet's leather jacket and closed his eyes while kisses and touches grazed him, and breathed heavily right along with Jet until they were both finished.

It wasn't mind-blowing. Not even close to that. Jet's hand seemed practiced enough, but he still didn't know Zuko's body well enough to do it _just_ right. But paradoxically that only made it more exciting because fuck, it was someone else. Someone else had touched Zuko's cock. Someone else wanted to learn him well enough to give him – that. And it was new, so new and strange and confusing, and Zuko couldn't even bring himself to feel repulsed.

Or to feel much of anything, really, besides the throbbing, ebbing pleasure that once again twisted him on the inside, though in an entirely new way.

He'd done something very wrong and that dirty part of him couldn't wait to do it again.

Jet's sweaty forehead pressed into the crook of Zuko's neck as they breathed, the air around them hot and the smells tangy. In silence they sat there, position awkward and uncomfortable, until their racing hearts settled into something that no longer felt like the wings of many moths taking flight all at once, and then Jet rolled off his lap to the side.

There was a very noticeable stain on the front of his jeans. Zuko spotted it, and immediately looked away, suddenly ashamed of his own open zipper.

He dressed in blessed silence, moving awkwardly in the tight space, and narrowly avoided elbowing Jet in the face. The bastard was either too winded or tactful enough not to say anything, but as soon as Zuko started smoothing back his short hair in the rear view mirror, he _laughed_.

Zuko looked to him, his eyes bleary and his hands shaking slightly. "What?"

"Do you know, it's the same place where we beat each other up?"

"Yeah," Zuko whispered, looking out the window at the spiry shadows of buildings in the distance. "Yeah, I guess it is."

And that was all they said about it, or about anything at all, right until the moment Zuko parked by Jet's house – or his foster family's house, as he liked to remind everyone – and Jet smiled at him.

"We still on for Sunday?"

Zuko nodded, hands tight on the steering wheel.

"Awesome. Thanks, Zuko."

Thankfully, he shut the door behind him before Zuko could ask "Thanks for what" and have the awkward conversation neither of them wanted to have.

It was better this way. Zuko would be free to explore this new side of himself and Jet would get – whatever it was he wanted in the first place. They didn't need to talk about it. They didn't _want_ to talk about it.

Zuko drove back home with the music at full volume, and ignored Uncle's worried looks and half-uttered questions as he stomped upstairs and straight to his bedroom.

 

***

 

There were more kisses. Some of them rushed, stolen and messy, some of them quick and butterfly-light, some of them lazy and slow when they thought they had time and no one was looking. There were more hands, too, and some hurried humping in dark alleys with fingers clawing and knees buckling and breaths stuttering out of rhythm. They never talked about it. Moments like these just – happened, with a hand straying or a lingering look, or a brush of thighs when they sat together. Jet seemed to know, and Zuko found himself reading his moods easily, and things somehow _rolled_.

He didn't know if it worked. He didn't know if he was even attracted to Jet in any serious way. All he knew was that when it happened, he didn't have to think, and Jet was good at keeping him distracted enough to mute any objections. For the time being, maybe it was enough for him to get by.

Get by and, perhaps… start hoping.

Which was how he found himself pressed against the teashop's back door, about to breach all the boundaries that still existed between them and invite this strange, angry boy into himself in more ways than one.

And that, he realized later when he looked back on that night, was only one of his many, many mistakes.

 

***

 

_"Fuck," Zuko finds himself whispering when light pours under his closed eyelids. "Did you have to do that?"_

_"Duh." Jet's breath is hot on his healthy cheek, sliding down to his jaw. "Now that I have you here, I want to see everything." He's kissing along Zuko's jaw now, and diving down to mouth at his neck again. There are teeth and Zuko sucks in a breath, because damn, it feels as though someone is tickling him in a good way and the tension crashes in a wave against his crotch and he needs something to be done about it, now._

_"Come on," he hisses. "There's a bed behind you."_

_"Christ." Jet nibbles on his neck some more and Zuko just knows there's going to be a mark there, but it feels good enough that he's able not to care._

_Then, Jet steps away from him with a breathless kind of smile that's also a little bit like a tiger could smile just before pouncing, and something drops in Zuko's stomach at the sight._

_They are here, this is now, and they're going to –_

_Jet turns to face the bed._

_His eyes fall on the black Fire Industries logo sprayed onto the red wall above it as soon as Zuko's do._

_He doesn't turn around for a long, long time._


	7. Epilogue - Alternative Universe

_**7\. Epilogue – Alternative Universe** _

 

“What the _fuck_ is _that_?”

The question drops between them like a stone into a puddle, splashing water everywhere, only this time it’s splashing questions and strangely raw ripples of emotions instead and Zuko doesn’t understand, but he does feel like he’s done something wrong.

“What do you mean?”

But then he looks at the logo of his father’s company and starts having a pretty good idea. The twisting thing inside him turns cold and he leans his weight against the door – the silence that follows is so heavy that it feels like it can crush him.

“That.” Jet doesn’t point at the black flame, but his words are somehow pointed enough that Zuko knows anyway. “What is _that_ doing in your fucking bedroom?”

That cold, twisting thing inside of him yanks, and suddenly Zuko is choking on his own saliva. 

Jet knows. Holy shit, he knows, and now Zuko is beginning to understand, too.

“Zuko Xi.” The words come slow, and a little raw around the edges, and a little shaky, as though Jet’s trying to talk himself out of something that he already knows is a fact. “You’re Zuko fucking _Xi_. Jesus fucking Christ, and I never –“

“Jet –“

“No!” This time, the word snaps like a lash. Jet finally turns around.

Zuko presses himself further into the door, even though there’s not a breath of space left. Jet looks like he’s possessed. 

“No, you don’t get to say anything,” he hisses, voice trembling, all of him trembling, eyes huge and wild, and Zuko frantically wonders if he should call for help, if this is some kind of attack. “You fucking shut up, _new kid_. You’re Ozai Xi’s relative, aren’t you. You and that uncle of yours. Don’t you dare lie.”

Zuko swallows. His throat scrapes, all dried up. He feels like his tongue might actually stick to the roof of his mouth and shrivel up, but he does manage to choke out, “His son.”

“His son,” Jet echoes, shifting his weight from one foot to another. “His son. Shit, and I had my _mouth_ on you.”

Zuko swallows again. He feels like the floor is sliding out from under him.

“I can’t fucking believe it.” Jet is swaying too, clutching at his forehead, staring off into space as though he can’t bear to look at Zuko. “Fire Industries. The shitheads who killed my parents. It was their roof that fell, did you know that? Did you know all along, _Xi_? Were you laughing at me the whole time?!”

“I didn’t.” It hurts to speak, it hurts to think about anything besides the support of wood behind him, but Zuko tries anyway. “I swear, I didn’t know, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you but I thought you’d go –“

“Crazy?” Jet snarls.

Zuko swallows dry. Looks away. “Something like that.”

Two hands close around his throat.

 _Now_ Jet is looking at him, his face cut open with emotions that are much too huge for him. Zuko feels exactly the same. He has no idea what is happening, only that there are suddenly ten pinpricks of pain squeezing the breath out of his windpipe slowly, with a strength that promises it can – and will – grow.

“You never told me,” Jet whispers with a rawness that cuts into Zuko roughly and all the way in. “You just – you knew, and you let me – and I thought – shit –“

Zuko can’t breathe. His vision starts to swim, and not only because of the rising pressure around his neck. His hands come up to close around Jet’s wrists on their own, but they’re not trying to pry them off – they just hold on. 

“I didn’t know,” he insists, though each of the words has to fight to get out. “About the accident. I’m… really sorry. I didn’t know.”

Jet looks terrifying. Like he doesn’t quite know what he’s doing, like he’s transfixed in a dark, dark world where he’s alone and trembling and hating himself for it, like he’s – betrayed. Zuko has never seen him in a state like that and a part of him wonders, _Can he kill me_? And he isn’t all that sure that the answer is no.

“I dedicated my life to fight bastards like your Dad,” he rasps, hands squeezing. “Like you. What the fuck are you even doing _here_ , Xi?!”

Zuko cannot answer that. There are black dots dancing in front of his eyes now, but he fights to keep them open and locked with Jet’s, and his scar hurts with the fresh pain of burning, and the memory-smell of coals and fire and burning tissue fills his nostrils, and his body is too weak to even keep him upright, and he feels he might throw up. 

Finally, Jet seems to have exhausted the power to speak. He just stands there, his hands tight around Zuko’s neck, and looks, and his face is scrunched up both in fury and horrible, horrible denial.

_No. This can’t be happening. Not now, not when we’ve come so close…_

_I trusted you._

_I disappointed you._

Then, slowly, hands around Zuko’s throat let go. There is a punch to his jaw. He sinks to the floor immediately, his limbs made of nothing but cotton, and he barely hears the slam of the door and the angry footsteps shooting bullets of sounds down the staircase. 

He curls in on himself and throws up.

 

***

 

He thinks he will never see Jet again, but on the next night, the Freedom Fighter returns.

The first brick flies right through the teashop window and sends glass flying in a thousand sharp, gleaming pieces onto tables.

People scream. Jump out of their chairs and huddle by the far wall, where the danger of being injured is the smallest. Some of them, those who sat by the window when it shattered, have bits of glass stuck in their skin, and Uncle is yelling at Jin to go find the first-aid kit.

Zuko is frozen right where he stands, the tray in his hands, the ten points of pain still sharp on his neck and bruised over the other mark Jet’s left there last night before everything went to hell, and they look at each other through the broken window. 

Jet’s face is set. It’s a mask of cold, cold fury and grim determination, and Zuko knows that the second brick will fly even before Jet hefts it in his hand.

“Everyone, take cover!” he yells, his voice sharp and raw, and tries to shield the customers who cower by the wall when the second missile shoots right through the other window, blasting it apart. 

Someone is calling for the police. Jin is back with the first-aid kit, eyes huge and terrified, and Uncle takes it from her and begins to attend to the injured. Zuko locks eyes with Jet again, feeling both empty and all too full, and tries to call to him, tell him to stop, but the words tangle in his throat and turn into bile. 

_It’s not my fault_ , he wants to scream. _I didn’t do anything to you. I didn’t even want you before you went and made me want you._

_I disappointed you and I’m sorry._

_I hate you for making me feel like this._

Another brick hits, bounces off the wall and lands on the pavement among crumbling plaster. Jet sends another one flying, into the teashop this time, and it slams into a table, which falls over in a rain of shattered porcelain. The next one lands right at Zuko’s feet.

He doesn’t know what to do.

Jet is standing there, fists balled up so tight that veins are popping up on his skin, expression dark and possessed, as if he’s now waiting for Zuko to react. Maybe to come out and fight him. And that’s probably the good thing to do if Zuko could only get angry – but he can’t. Just when he needs that red-hot wave to swallow him up, to replace his blood with molten fire, it’s not coming. Instead, he feels barren and cold, as though something inside of him froze up, and the phantom pressure on his neck squeezes, his lungs making it so that he’s conscious of every single breath he takes. 

Later, anger will come – much later, after the police comes and chief Lin Bei Fong herself drags Jet into the car. Later, after Uncle informs him in a quiet, cautious voice that Jet will be transferred to a correction house in Detroit. Later, when he’s sitting alone in his red bedroom, the Fire Industries logo burning over his head in black.

But it takes a long time for its fire to catch because it’s difficult to ignite one when everything seems so goddamn wet. 

If he wasn’t his father’s son, he thinks, feeling the first pricks of familiar rage pointing at him, probing his insides tentatively. If this was a different world – different universe. One where there wouldn’t be pictures of his family, of Mai, on the cork board above his desk; one where Jet’s parents still lived and he didn’t spend his time imprinting his revenge on the world. Then maybe, whatever it was… it could have worked. 

… No it wouldn’t, he realizes as soon as the thought enters his brain, and then he draws in on himself on the bed. In a different universe, they wouldn’t even meet.

There is a knock on the door. “Nephew? Can I come in, please?”

Zuko doesn’t respond, but Uncle opens the door anyway and sits down beside him, face wrinkled with worry.

“Don’t say anything,” Zuko pleads, hiding his face in his hands. “I don’t think I can hear it right now.”

After a beat of silence, there are old, warm hands closing in around him and he is enveloped by the smell of ginseng tea. 

He doesn’t allow himself to cry, or to reach out. But he doesn’t shake Uncle’s embrace off either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry.
> 
> Re: the choking scene, that was inspired by "Float," which in my opinion is the best Jetko to ever Jetko. Go read if you haven't yet.


End file.
